Commander Genius

About

Commander Keen is a series of side-scrolling platform games developed primarily by id Software, following the eight-year-old genius Billy Blaze as his alter ego Commander Keen defends Earth and the galaxy with a homemade spaceship, rayguns, and a pogo stick; most episodes were released for MS-DOS in 1990-1991. Commander Genius is an open-source (GPL) engine that interprets and runs the Commander Keen (episodes 1-6 and Dreams) and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure games natively, without DOS emulation, on Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and Switch; it descends from the earlier CloneKeen and CloneKeenPlus projects but is a complete C++ rewrite, retaining only a small fraction of the original CloneKeen code.

How it differs from the original

It adds features the original DOS games lacked, including OpenGL-accelerated rendering, higher framerates, up to four-player multiplayer, unrestricted joystick support, named save slots, and a Lua-based mod/patching system; the developers note the resulting physics and pacing are close to but not identical to the original DOS releases, and support for Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure is still experimental and incomplete.

Getting started

Original game data is required; Keen 1, 4, Dreams, and Cosmos 1 can be obtained through the built-in in-game store, and other supported episodes can be added from an original DOS copy. After installing the game data, select the desired episode from the launcher's menu.

History

The engine traces back to an earlier, abandoned project called CloneKeen; after it was left unmaintained, a later maintainer created a fork called CloneKeenPlus, which was eventually rewritten from scratch in C++ and renamed Commander Genius.

Controls

• Hidden cheat codes exist for god mode, giving all items, flight, and no-clipping, some requiring a -cheat launch option or an options-menu toggle to enable.

Media